What the b**hell were the BBC up to on Saturday (1st May) changing the time of Heroes (last 2 episodes) on the HD channel and not getting the EPG updated. I recorded all of Ross and bits besides and the first 2 minutes of episode 18 of Heroes.
The rest of Heroes, after watching it for 17 weeks? Gone to hell in a bucket.
It's hard enough to work out a reason for the inexplicable time change but for the EPG not to be changed has made me furious. How on earth do I now get to see the last two episodes?
Apparently they are repeated on the 8th May on BBC 2, but heres the thing. I bought into HD, the series is in HD, and I actually want to see it in HD. Was it so difficult to show it at the scheduled time?

I totally agree. Last 2 episodes and there ruined.

They are not even on iPlayer. What were the BBC thinking.

John

Two separate issues:

For rights reasons Heroes on BBC HD has to be simulcast with the BBC 2 showings. When the Snooker ran late BBC HD had to find filler programmes and then wait for BBC 2 to be ready to show the episodes. (Yes the rights really are that restrictive- BBC HD has to be within seconds of the BBC 2 showings.)

The EPG wasn't updated- thats the fault of Red Bee, who control such things for the BBC. Or if it was, it was done in such a way that your box didn't read. My BBC 2 recordings (on Sky+) are very long (70 minutes and 65 minutes) and the first episode didn't start recording until 11:40pm, so it seems they didn't quite get the EPG right last night, but it'll be a difficult thing to control with a live event they aren't sure the finish time of.

The best thing I'd say to do is ask email the BBC and ask them to repeat the last two episodes on BBC HD when they're repeated on BBC 2, if the rights allow that.

Both episodes are now on the iplayer- streaming only, not in HD and not for download. The reason- rights, again.

How to ultimately make the service fail... insert 'later with Jules' clip and then another to make the recording of episode 18 Fail ....
thanks a bunch....

They weren't doing it for fun, there was a very good reason why they had to! Not actually the BBCs fault- the HD rights would have been offered on a 'these are the conditions- take it or leave it' basis. (Its the same situation with Mad Men)

Then why didn't the schedulers make sure it was broadcast when it couldn't be affected by an overrun of a live broadcast !

i was watching live just to check as i had heroes on series link and my humax recorded them fine

Its repeated tonight on BBC 3 at 10pm, will just have to make do with it in SD, but rather pathetic of the BBC to ruin the last episode for the sake of some boring snooker.

Follow up question on the rights issues: why on earth does it matter to a "supplier" when and on what channel a programme is broadcast?

Could be because Universal class Heroes being on BBC HD at a different time as an additional showing and so want more cash for it. Or the BBC are only allowed to show the programme a set number of times. Or they (Universal) see the HD version as a premium product and want to protect potential Blu Ray sales.

As I said before the BBC would be given these conditions and either they accept them or theres no Heroes in HD.

Pathetic that a programme is on that doesn't interest you but is the semi finals in the world championships of a sport thats very popular. Wow, how selfish of people to want to watch that live, perhaps they don't like Heroes? How inconsiderate for the BBC to put on something you don't like.

Very interesting- so it appears the BBC did everything they should when a programme runs late, but it looks like peoples boxes may have been at fault.

I might be wrong but I think Freesat+ boxes use accurate recording- so the recording is triggered by a signal when the programme actually starts- so should cope fine with something like last night.

Because then people would moan that it wasn't on. Or not on close enough to its US transmission. Theres lots of programmes to fit in and the BBC decided the best place for it was Saturday nights. If it had been on in another slot its quite possible a news event or another sports event would have caused more disruption.

There was a lot of time allowed for the Snooker but it run far later than anyone expected- thats sport, and its something the BBC like to show because people, amazingly, like different things.

They were on iPlayer at least five minutes before broadcast, thanks to the snooker overrun. It's mentioned in the Cult forum.

And I think they should've outright postponed Heroes until next week. I can see a lot of complaints about this being sent to the BBC, and I expect to see it on next week's Points of View.

I'd think they were pretty close to doing that, but then you'd get the complaints of 'Why did they cancel it, why didn't they just show it later' etc etc.

I'd think next weeks Points of View will be full of complaints about how much post election coverage there has been- assuming its a hung parliament.

Worked on BBC HD fine, I did wonder wtf was going on as it seemed to be getting later and later for no reason.

It happened on VM to i ended up with bloody johnathan ross no wonder people are starting to resort to illegal ways to watch programs.

The first of the episodes in SD appears to have recorded OK on my Foxsat (not watched it yet so cannot be certain) however the second episode failed due to an 'unknown error'! Fortunately I can record it again tonight. I checked and there are some further rebroadcasts of 18/19 and 19/19 next weekend (not looked to see if they are also in HD as that does not affect me).

WW
Last edited by winterwarmer : 02-05-2010 at 18:32

If 5 for C4 HD dont come to freesat, all the programs are only 1 click away and we can often watch them weeks before they are shown here.

They really dont seem to realise that.

The scheduling excuses due to sports events is beyond a joke. Every year snooker and Wimbledon over run. It would be easy to schedule programmes to acount for this and then show event related programmes to fill in the event of an earlier finish.
As for the need to simulcast, I remain unconvinced as to a minute by minute schedule, but since BBC 2 are repeating both episodes next week after the simulcast of "Later" it would seem an opportunity to simulcast them on BBC HD......... or not!
I have e-mailed the BBC with a complaint.

The schedulers make the best guess as to when an event will finish- but sport is unpredictable- thats part of the joy of it- and so some events can run much longer than expected, or indeed much shorter.

The problem with scheduling (say) an hour after the expected finish time is that you then get the opposite complaint if theres any early finish- ie Why are you showing hours of filler when there isn't any actual play. So a best guess is made. Most of the time it works fine, every now and again it goes wrong.

You'll notice that easily droppable repeats are often scheduled after events with an unpredictable finish time. In this case the BBC 2 schedulers decided they still wanted to show Heroes around the time it would normally be on. Otherwise there would have been countless complaints as to why it wasn't on, or indeed why there were old repeats shown and it was on much later. (Because you can bet if they'd done that the snooker would have finished on time- so goes sods law.)

And when events overrun there are now systems in place to try to ensure people recording the programme still get it. From whats been said here it appears that the EPG / recording data was transmitted correctly- its that some boxes didn't interpret in the right way. Thats not the BBCs fault- its down to the box manufacturers and how they write their software.

I'd suggest the fact that BBC HD aren't repeating the episodes when BBC 2 are is because they're having to juggle programmes from four BBC channels. Repeat too may things (or repeat some things too much) and people complain. Remain unconvinced if you like about the need for simulcast needing to exactly match the BBC 2 showings, but its been mentioned on the BBC HD blog. If you've ever seen the restrictions that come with a set of of TV rights, you'd realise its entirely likely.

I too, have emailed a complaint to the BBC.

I have no problem with them carrying on showing a live event; if I was watching that event I would expect them to keep covering it also.

What I do object to is the much later scheduling of the series finale of a programme that has been running for 17 weeks. The BBC should not assume that fans a) would stay up to watch, or b) that everyone has a recorder which will cope with the reschedule.

I don't know whether the EPG was changed as I was not watching the snooker and had already gone to bed. What I do know is that my Humax HDR happily recorded the original timeslots and therefore replaced Heroes with Wossy (a poor swap in my opinion!)

To make amends, the BBC should be made to repeat the HD episodes at a later date.

Geoff

It's still incompetant of schedulers to put a series Finale on late at night after a live sporting event ! It would have been beter to postpone it as they did with Ashes to Ashes when the Golf was on!

I was still up but getting ready to hit the sack. The EPG when I went into check didn't show that the episodes were due to record ! (eventhough I had a series record set !) so I set them to record ! and came back out, chatting to my eldest son about it at the time as he thought it should have started so I popped back into the EPG and an extra programme had slid into the EPG...apparently it did it a couple more times but I'd gone to bed!

I would be interested to know which other programmes apart from films have been effected by the simulcast agreement. I have not noticed any others which have stuck to a precise broadcast time other than BBC productions such as Ross, Later and so on. Damages for example is split broadcast.
With respect to scheduled postponement to allow for events, this has happened to Heroes for week two and I think (not certain) on another occasion during the run. The final two episodes should merit more thoughtful consideration. It's like ripping the last 6 pages from a book.
As for the repeat times on BBC2 (early hours of May 8th), BBC HD is only showing the preview loop at this time.
When Heroes was running its first season the BBC commited themselves in public statements to supporting the programme to its final conclusion, however many series it ran to. After series 2 there was some doubt from NBC as to its continuation but I suspect international sales, whilst not primary, had some influence on recommisioning. This would justfy some flexibility I would hope, after all what would NBC's loss actually be?

I believe the BBC arent allowed to show anything on HD first, it always has to be shown on SD 1st or at the same time which is really poor.